Brainstorming and Peers Exchanges

Peers helping each other in projects. Other peers are welcome!
@Sandy @Veerle @raffaella @franca @heloisazal @Cristiane

@heloisazal thank you for starting this thread. I thought I summarize some of what we have been discussing in our email thread, incase any other LCL participants would like to join our discussion.

I would love to hear from others on what I am "stuck on". My biggest obstacle is finding support for creative learning. Administrators in my school district seem to care only about test scores and with the Common Core rolling out there seems to be even more pressure to teach to the test, which is such a disservice to our kids. I have only a general idea for a final project. I am thinking ahead to next year and an after school program that I will be participating in. I will lead a tech club, since this is an after school program, I will have a little more freedom and it will give me a chance to showcase the 4 P's. At the end of each session the club always holds a showcase and I would like to use this as an opportunity to recruit parents and other educators to give "Ps" a chance! I have hit a wall on an actual project to share during the share fair. As a result I have been focusing more on @Veerle project.

@Veerle project to quote from here email: > In the Centre for Experiential Education where I work, we developed a map (http://www.talentenarchipel.be/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/kaartkleur1.pdf ) to talk with children about where there talents (not so much where you're good in, as where you want and try to grow in) and passions are, the let them (+ peers, teachers, parents) discover new passions by exploring diferent islands (and tinker on/with them). the idea was to let them play small minigames on each island as an introduction to the archipelago of talents.

I have started to working on the Music Island. I think I may be a bit over my head in the coding of this game, it still just a draft. There is actually 3 games or activities in the game. First is a "Simon" type game, the 2nd part is keyboard and there is small song for the user to play or they can just play the keyboard and invent their own song and the last part of the game is "Rockband" type game.

this is my Island

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/21086962/

This project has to be developed with you

Thanks Sandy for summarizing some of what we have been discussing! it was really a good thing to do! Great!

I started to remix it. but don't know if it s what you have in mind. I made some sprites combining more than one instrument, so you can have more possibilities.
Music Island remix

I agree with you Franca. I think we're having this wonderful chance of know and interacting with different people, different backgrounds, etc. As I mentioned before we're not only Tinkering in virtual (i.e.Scratch) or physical (i.e.Lego. Makey Makey) but also this big experiment of tinkering in another level too, with other people, writing, discussing, hanging out and even personally! It's a totally new experience!

Hi Raffaelia,
Good start to your project. I really like the look of the project! Can you elaborate a little more on what you intend for the user to do in the game? I was thinking this may be a good game to use lists and perhaps have the user search out animals to find in a specific order or create a pattern.

Thanks Heloisa. I have started another version of Music Island too. I am not sure if it what @Veerle wants but it been a fun exercise for me and I have been learning as I do it, which is always a positive! This version include perhaps the happiest song ever! My students seem to be crazy for this song!

Thank you, sure I can go on working at the project, nevertheless i would
appreciate
have your ideas abut the possible developing of it.
I look forward to your reply

raffaella

Ok, I think I will remix it and incorporate the idea of search and find. I be interested in hearing what @Veerle would like the game to include.

Hi Sandy,
So nice to see your project grow.
The idea behind the islands is to give children (and teachers) a framework to let them explore their own talents. Something to help generate ideas and communicate about them. As exploration is the key-word, it might be more fun to have a startpage where you can choose what you want to do on the island, instead of working with levels. So can children choose what they want to do. I'll try to work out a scheme in scratch if that would be useful. THat way we could incorporate more games later on. One thing i was thinking is a composing game where you 'write' your own music by placing sprites on the field.

That way i can combine your think/math island with my think/mapping challenge (idea is there, but haven't started yet), Rafaella. I find it still hard to understand what your idea is about, so i'm going to wait a bit more before commenting if that is ok.

How do you see our collaboration? I like to work on the archipelago-of-talents-game (anybody a suggestion for a shorter name?) with you, so fun to work with peers, to see other ideas. But for me it's also a learning process of letting go my own visualization and ideas to make room for your input. collaboration with peers is such a powerful process, and I have yet to learn a lot about how to do it. I find it extremely challenging to find a balance between defending my ideas and being 'bossy'.

One of the things I want to explore more are the things that promote and hinder tinkering-processes of persons. I notice for myself is that I keep tinkering in my head. I try combining things, build things in my head, break them down if something wont work (or so i imagine), and start again. Sometimes i try small pieces in real life if i don't know what would be the effect, so i cant imagine. There is this whole tinkering-process in my head and sometimes I take the step to real life-tinkering, but more often, I find a new idea to tinker with. I have so much ideas and this way I can spend my time on the things I want to tinker with the most. But I also take away my opportunity to get feedback of materials and peers which I know would benefit me a lot. So what makes me take the step from mental tinkering to tinkering in the physical or digital world? (for now i think that if i can imagine it sufficiently, i don't need to tinker; if I don't find any connections with what I know already the step to tinkering is to big. That would mean the things I tinker with have to be in my zone of proximal development) Is tinkering with ideas also tinkering, or do you need 'real' feedback and not 'imagined' feedback to call it tinkering? Can you be a scientist-tinkerer, philosopher-tinkerer (I hope so)? (When I'm reading literature or doing observations, it feels like I'm finding new pieces of a puzzle, and I'm tinkering with where they fit, how the are linked.)

You can find more info about the idea of the "Talents-Archipelago-Game" here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AoRnfncgSmRrC_veAPB_569678ondquPy3bddDHXW-M/edit?usp=sharing

@Veerle, Are you thinking one start page for all the islands and then perhaps sub menus for each island if there is more then one activity to explore? For the framework of exploration, that probably makes more sense than levels. The only thing I will say about levels, that you may want to consider, is that I find kids to be motivated by them. It is a challenge for them to make it through different levels and keeps them engaged in a game. Also it may give them a chance to explore an area (that they may not have otherwise) and perhaps discover a talent or interest that they did not even know they had until being exposed to it.
I think it would very helpful if you work out a scheme that we can use and remix.

I love that idea too. That would be fun, I try to tinker with that as well.

I have enjoyed working with you. I do not mind at all the feedback you have given me. It is not being bossy and the feedback you provide enables me to grow. I see it this way, I want to help out and by doing so I learn too. A lot of what I create, I am just putting out there and hopes that it will be useful but knowing that my vision may not always align to what someone else may have in their mind. That's ok, it kind of like the spaghetti test---You throw it against the wall and see what sticks, if the spaghetti sticks to the wall it's done, if not, you continue to cook it or in my case continue to create.

Hi @Veerle , I agree with you in the first moment not be a game with levels. In orde to "compose" music, one thing to do is to combine instruments. I began a remix of it to have an idea, have you seen it? remix Could we go trough this path? We could also add other instruments, other combinations.
We could also use arrows keys to increase/ decrease volume and increase/decrease beats things the composers do..

Hey, @Sandy, let's put some sauce in this spaghetti, right?

Veerle, I'm so glad you are sharing your ideas and projects! That's wonderful, since this help everyone to learn from each other,thanks!. You're lucky for having @Sandy as collaborator too! As I mentioned , she's great!

Hi, @Sandy! This obstacle you are stuck on seams to be more common you can imagine. Every innovation is not well accepted in general, it has been like this in all the human history
Yesterday I was able to attend an important event here in Sao Paulo about education called "Transformar" (to transform). It was organized by foundations interested in change the education in Brazil. They brought many speakers (also Mitchel Resnick) to talk about their innovations in this area. Many of them spoke about the difficult of their projects being accepted. One teacher from California talked about the wonderful results she's having with poor kids applying hybrid education. She told that many people from different places come to know her work, but the other teachers from her don't share this idea.

Hey @heloisazal,
I haddn't thougt about the increase, decrease part and combining different instruments. that's a nice one
My idea started from placing clones of blocks (long and short) on a wide horizontal band on different heights, and when you hit play, a reader goes along the line and plays the notes. something like this but than without having to know anything from music. just very intuitive: higher block is higher note, (with round down of y, no need for exact placement) longer block is longer note (to blocks with no gap is even longer tone), tempo comes from distance between blocks. The freedom of composing by tinkering with placement.
Maybe we could incorporate different colored blocks for different instruments. and a speed bar so the reader goes faster or slower.
One of the things I like about collaborating is that I often think about games that I think are programmable. So other ideas are often extra challenging.

That's a good idea! I'll try to remix it as soon as possible. We can discuss on line during the session breakout. Can you make it? I'll be in one of the breakout rooms. Let's meet there and we can talk more after the session too, ok?

@Sandy, I'm not sure I agree with using levels as a motivation to explore new areas. I see levels as a tool to challenge and to give chances to grow by gradually increasing difficulty. For me levels have to be connected. You learn new skills/trick that you can than use later on in the game. So I absolutely agree that there is motivation in levels to grow and to challenge yourself, but i don't think it's the ('right') motivation to explore.
Exploring for me is about curiosity for the yet unknown, the half known, the what if I... It's about making choices: do I continue on this road and see where it leads, or do I go left? Or right? For me the possibility of choice is necessary for exploration: the choice to try different things, work with different materials, ... So to make choice possible, options should be visible, (what doesn't mean that it should be clear what the options are exactly.)

I'll try to work out a framework for the game tonight, that might make it clearer.

hi, @heloisazal and @Sandy,
for my phd-research we ask schools/teachers to work on an 10-week long project called Village At School. My main topic is observing what students learn and what talents they use. The goal of the project is letting the children invent and build a mini-village on 3 m² (or 6m² if a lot of classes work together) where as much as possible works. Here is an example of the result of one of our Dutch schools ('groep 4' are +/- 7 years old, 'groep 8' are +/-12). Teachers get the message: it's their project, their responsibility, you can only facilitate. For most teachers this is a total different way of working than usual.
For most teachers the sense of lack of control is terrifying. The process goes slow, the progress is not always visible so 'aren't we wasting valuable time?'. Most students aren't used to work like this (anymore), and 'letting go' is very hard for teachers. While almost all teachers have these fears and struggles in the beginning of the project, almost all of them said afterwards that they would work with projects with a more open character and more room for students ideas again and that the project not only influenced their ideas about the values of projects, but that they noticed a change in their approach for other subjects as well.
The amount of work and the length is one of the mayor arguments to not participate in the project. (one of the reasons why we preferred spreading the project over 10 weeks instead of one project-week was that children have to arrange school-trips or invite guest-speakers/specialists) But one of the mayor advantages we noticed is that it gives teachers the chance to tinker them self with how to (inter)act as a facilitator. For example, one teacher noticed that her pupils (age 9-10) found it very hard to design parts of the village. So she designed an open template for them to help their designproces. Not a structured step by step model that you would have to adapt for each project, but an open form that gave them room (literally) to generate ideas, think about conditions and materials and make a first design.This helped children tremendously to work on project(parts) independently with peers so the teacher had time to interact with and observe her pupils.

Hi @Sandy !Now I could listen to the song and know why your students are crazy for it!

@Veerle the Village at School reminds me of "The Day in the Park" example from The New Pathway reading from week 2. It encouraging to hear the teachers reflections at the end of the projects. @heloisazal I feel like the teacher from California!

@Veerle another persuasive argument. I have to agree with you and I am very thankful that you have shared your perspective, I am learning so much from this discussion, much more than I had anticipated! Thanks!

Hi everybody! today we had a wonderful breakout session discussion! Thank you all!
Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to everybody talk and @Sandy and @danoff couldn't make it. What about having another hangout before next Tuesday session to everybody be able of presenting and discussing the projects? And for more brainstorming and more peer exchanging? I shared the link to google doc with the notes. Please take a look and feel free to add your projects and thoughts!

Sorry missed todays breakout session. I would be up for hangout since I missed this one. I don't see the link to the Google Doc.

Hi Sandy! Please check your google+ account for the link. Let me know if it's ok! Tell me what times/,days are better for you for hangout! Thank you!

@Veerle I have been working a little more on the Music Island and made Music Island 3.0.
I think this version may be closer to what you had in mind. I am not done coding the composing portion. I changed the keyboard which now has a slide variable, so that you can change instruments. The mandolin is space saver for another activity. I took the original Music Island project out of the studio as it was the least favorite.
@heloisazal the best times for me is Wednesdays & Thursdays evenings anytime after 5pm EST. I read through the notes from last Tuesday breakout, really sorry I missed it. This last week and the next few weeks to come are getting crazy busy for me, so I may be a little less active here than I have been.

Thank you, Sandy! Thursday after 5pm works for me
Too.

The coconutgame is so cool!
maybe (to stay in the theme) have some laying bananas to present longer tones?

Sorry If I'm a little absent, it's very busy here, but I'll do my best to be a little more present tommorow.

Hi, nice project you're doing! The color keys are OK, but the sound to the black keys are on wrong places, I mean the correspondent sound is in another place.Could you fix that?

Thanks @heloisazal, I fixed the black keys. @Veerle I added banana and pineapples to the compose activity. Coconuts are 1/4 notes, bananas 1/2 notes & pineapples are whole notes.

Nice, it's almost a fruitsalad now
I was wondering, do you know how to work with clones in scratch? I think it might be useful for the composing activity as you have a lot of the same sprites

I originally started coding it with clones but it was too buggy, so I started over again with just sprites. However, in the end I change my coding completely, so I think I may take another look at using clones.

Good morning @Veerle. I had to make another Scratch profile for my 4th graders to share their work as they have been working offline. I decided using this profile to remix my project and try it with clones. Now instead of piles of fruit, just one of each and when you click them, you get a clone. The issue I'm having is that the clones are cloning themselves as well. Here the project link http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/21668642/

Super, I'm going to look at it, I have never worked with clones, and i really want to learn.
I think I can make your noteselection part simpler, so if it's ok, i'm going to try remixing the coconutpart.

It was good to see you today. I had a heavy case of stage fright today during the breakout session, so I just listen. Hope you are feeling better and feel free to remix away on the project. I am excited to see your project develop. Please keep in touch and I will still be tinkering away on Music Island!

couldn't help trying.
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/21703382/
does not work perfect yet

I couldn't help myself either and again I remixed the remix. Big change in this remix is how the user clones a note. It works much better. I liked the way you used a list in your remix. Now that I see how you used the list, I may have to remix yet again!
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/21724799/

Had to use a list because otherwise I couldn't skip the #'s and b-flats
I think everything in mine (http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/21703382/) works now. I added a bin to trow away clones.
Good idea to make the 'mother'-fruits bigger. That way I could use the 'when i'm clicked'-starter.
Let me know what you think

Hi @Veerle sorry I am so late responding. After the Share fair I took a bit of break from LCL. I have three more weeks left in the school year and then summer vacation and finally sometime to take a breath. The project looks great. I really like the idea of adding the bin to throw away the notes. How is the rest of game coming along?